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The Ground War Will Be Autonomous

"The kind of remotely operated weapons Sadowski is talking about likely wouldn’t fall under the proposed autonomous weapons ban, says Peter Asaro, Co-Founder of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, and supporter of a “killer robot” ban.

“I believe the real concern is that there is meaningful human control over the firing of weapons in each and every attack,” Asaro tells Inverse. “In the case of remote-control tanks, how much information is available to the human making the targeting decisions? How many tanks are they supervising? What is the quality of their situational awareness, in light of being physically remote.”

There should also be some assurance that a semi-autonomous weapon can’t be given greater autonomy with little oversight. “There is also a question as to how easily a tank could be turned into an autonomous weapon by updating its software,” says Asaro."